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to CyberHound It was years ago that I began to be interested in pedigree research—before I owned a computer or knew anything about pedigree programs. I was lucky enough to be living near excellent sources of pedigree collections from the 1950s and 1960s. Marjorie Brandt’s famed Abbot Run Valley kennel was situated in Rhode Island and Joan Scholz’s well known Manor Hill Bassets were only a few miles from us. I copied these two collections, put the pedigrees into a big box, and waited for the time and opportunity to use them.
About seven years ago I finally had a computer powerful enough to handle large amounts of data. After some research I decided to use a program for human genealogical research instead of one designed exclusively for dogs, and I chose a very inexpensive, easy to use program called Personal Ancestry File put out by the Mormons.
Then came the originally quite tedious task of putting all my data into the computer to create a large database. I began with my own pedigrees, continued with pedigrees I received from Marjorie Brandt and Joan Scholz. Then I attacked the BHCA yearbooks. In this manner I collected about 5,000 entries in my database within a few months. Then I became really lucky. I met fellow breeder Betty Kinslow at the South Carolina Nationals in 1992 and she lent me the hundreds of very early pedigrees she had collected many years before. With these pedigrees, linked to later ones, I started to be able to get back to the 1920s and to the first imported basset hounds from England. In addition, I could also rely on some published material: books and articles dealing with the early history of the basset hound. For my research on England a collection of English pedigrees, lent to me by fellow breeder Gwen McCullagh (Brendans Bassets), was also indispensable. This collection of 191 four-generation pedigrees of English champions between 1954 and 1982 published by the Publications’ Sub-Committee of The Basset Hound Club takes us back to the 1930s, an important period in the history of the English basset hound. I also received a few odd stud books from the 1950s and 1960s from a couple of friends. An acquaintance of mine had a complete set of stud books from the 1980s; she was happy to get rid of them, I was happy to take them off her hands. Only recently I received more early stud books from Joan Deibler of Misty Meadows Bassets. Joan’s stud books originally belonged to the Buchers of Rhode Island, breeders of the well known Warwick basset hounds. And since 1992 I have been subscribing to the monthly stud books.
In addition to the stud books I have collected many other sources of information. For example, I have an almost complete set of Buglers, a monthly basset hound magazine, and of Tally-Hos, the official publication of BHCA. Both magazines are excellent sources of pedigrees, complete or partial. I also have an extensive set of show catalogues going back to the 1960s (the early ones came from Joan Scholz’s collection while the later ones are our own), primarily of shows held in New England, New York, and New Jersey. Today, with the help of the Internet and many of the show results available there, I am able to record details (birth dates, sires and dams, breeders, owners, registration numbers) of dogs shown anywhere in the United States.
I also received through Jim Chester of San Ramon, California—also a fellow breeder—an extensive collection of pedigrees of basset champions, going back to the earliest American bassets in the 1920s. These priceless pedigrees were collected by the late Bev Stockfelt, breeder and later judge of basset hounds. Bev gathered her material at the time when there were no computers and one can only admire her diligence. She typed up about 4,000 pedigrees on an electric typewriter equipped with a red-and-black ribbon. In addition to the pedigrees there were also 4,000 3 x 5 index cards with the names, sires and dams of each American champion. The number of these cards corresponded to the appropriate five-generation pedigree arranged numerically. Bev due to her illness stopped gathering data in 1985 but luckily where her collection of American champions stopped, mine began. I now have a database of approximately 22,000 basset hounds in which I can trace most living bassets to Fino de Paris, the first English basset champion imported from France.
What have I learned from all this? A great deal. First of all, with a fair amount of certainty I can say that all of our bassets trace their ancestry to a few French imports to England of the ancestors of our modern basset, the Basset Artésien Normand, in the 1870s. It doesn’t matter how different our hounds look today; they all came from the same two or three dogs, who were most likely knuckled over (today a disqualifying fault), weighed maybe 30 pounds (as opposed to 50, 60, or 70) and were a lot higher on leg and lighter in bone than today. The second, equally important observation is that until the early 1950s there was no real distinction between field dogs and show dogs. Today, unfortunately, that is not the case. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the breed can distinguish between field and show bassets. Sometime they almost look like two different breeds. (I might add here that there are a few brave souls who try to breed dogs who can hold their own in both field trials and in the show ring!) Third, until the 1950s a large number of bassets were registered as blue-ticked or silver, which attests to the fact that in France more than a hundred years ago the Artesian bassets were occasionally crossed with another French hound breed, the Basset Bleu de Gascogne, a breed which is blue-ticked. Fourth, the 1950s saw a great deal of growth in breeding, with the number of bassets multiplying rapidly during that period. Dams often had three or four litters and, in turn, four or five of the get in each litter were bred. Fifth, with absolute certainty we know that bloodhounds were introduced into the strain not just once in the nineteenth century but again in the twentieth, both times in England. That crossing gave our basset hounds their typical bloodhound-like heads and introduced a heavier bone structure than one would find in the Artesian basset hounds. Sixth, we know that some of the American kennels, especially Carl Smith’s kennel in Ohio in the 1920s, crossbred bassets with beagles and possibly with dachshunds.
What can my pedigree program do? Many, many interesting things. I can easily print out five-generation pedigrees of most bassets in my database. I can print out a complete pedigree of many dogs, called the Ahnentafel chart, which can be as many generations as one specifies. Current dogs’ Ahnentafel charts go back about 33 or 34 generations. The program can calculate the number of descendants of any given dog. I can calculate the exact relationship between any two basset hounds, and I have not yet found any two animals who were not related many, many times over!
The gathering of data is an endless enterprise—I still have huge gaps which can be filled only slowly. I still haven’t managed to finish searching all the Buglers for data and haven’t even begun work on Tally-Ho. I am still plowing through the 1950s and 1960s stud books and haven’t yet begun my stud books from the 1980s. Yet, it is already a useful tool for tracing the history of the basset hound in this country and, prior to 1922, in England and France.
I would appreciate any assistance from all of you who own a basset hound. Please send me your pedigrees to be included in the database. It will help to make my giant jigsaw puzzle more complete.:
Eva S. Balogh
Brevis Bassets
199 Wooding Hill Road
Bethany, CT 06524
Tel.: 203-393-2366
Fax: 203-393-2273
email: esbalogh@adelphia.net